Examples gender inequality

There are a lot of beautiful hikes in New Mexico, and Albuquerque is no exception since some of the city’s many hiking trails are just outside the city limits. If you haven’t hiked in mountains and high-desert terrain before though, it is wise to learn about altitude sickness and how to prevent it from happening. Though Albuquerque is a desert, the city’s altitude is over 5,000 feet, at least one mile above sea level. The surrounding mountains are even higher. The Sandia Mountains are over 10,300 feet above sea level, with the highest crests at over 12,000 feet. People who aren’t accustomed to such high altitudes sometimes suffer from altitude sickness when first visiting the city. If you are from a sea level place or are used to lower altitudes, please keep that in mind – most people feel tired until they adjust, and that feeling is intensified if you go hiking or rock climbing without being careful. Ascending hikes in the mountains … [Read more...] about Altitude Sickness in Albuquerque and Other Warnings and Dangers

Naveen Jain clears his throat ceremoniously. ‘We want to go to the Moon – not because it is easy, but because it is great business,’ he says, altering the words President Kennedy used to describe the first Moon landing. Jain is the co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, the first of two private companies with a license to leave Earth’s orbit, land on the Moon and return with bits of it. ‘When we get our Moon shot, it will really show what entrepreneurs are capable of,’ he says. They hope to launch by the end of this year.Moon Express is in the running for the Lunar XPrize, a $30million cash award for the first private company to land an unmanned craft on the Moon. Funded by Google, the prize aims to boost space travel and spur ‘the development of discovering and using space resources.’ It is a key part of a growing interest by billionaire companies in outer space fuels and minerals.‘There are at least 50 private firms intent on … [Read more...] about Moon shot: lunar mining

Until very recently, the Expedia booking site knew me as “Ed Hewitt,” going back to the day I signed up for the service nearly 15 years ago. And Expedia knows a lot of my friends for whom I have booked travel over the years — Patty, Tom, Chris, Ben, Dan and a few others. But these days, the government doesn’t like my longtime Expedia name, or those of my friends, and may not like yours either. The TSA’s new Secure Flight program is now requiring us to use our full legal names as they appear on our accepted form of identification — so now I shall be Edward C., and my friends shall henceforth be Patricia A., Thomas P., Christopher W., Benjamin H. and Daniel R., or we won’t be visiting each other — not by taking a flight at least. One of the TSA’s main reasons for Secure Flight is that it will “greatly reduce the number of passengers misidentified as a match to the watch list.” Given that the no-fly lists are notoriously … [Read more...] about TSA’s Secure Flight Program: What It Means for You

by Rachel McGinnisLaura Ingalls Wilder was born on February 7, 1867 in Pepin, Wisconsin, the daughter of Charles and Caroline Ingalls. This prolific American woman had a number of occupations throughout her lifetime, ranging from a farmer to a schoolteacher, but it was her writing that caused her to become a staple of western culture.From ages sixty-five to seventy-six, Laura authored the Little House series, which chronicled her life as a western pioneer as she traveled through the Dakota territories, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri, which now houses the Laura Ingalls Wilder home and museum exhibit in Mansfield. Previously, her stories were often mistakenly perceived as an autobiographical telling of her childhood, yet they are now considered historical fiction by contemporary critics. Although drawing on her personal experiences as an early settler, certain aspects of her life have been altered in the stories to better suit Wilder’s purpose when composing the … [Read more...] about Strong Pioneer Women: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Western Classics

Bhutan is credited as the first country to have implemented the concept of ‘Gross National Happiness’ as an official measure for the state of a nation, introduced in 1972. After the global financial crash in 2008, ideas about giving the ‘spiritual, physical, social and environmental health of [people] and natural environment’ more prominence over mere economic development are reflected more and more in international efforts towards a sustainable future.The Happy Planet Index (HPI), developed by the New Economics Foundation, takes a rather radical approach on this issue. It aims to measure well-being and happiness by taking a universal and long-term approach to understanding, how efficiently people in a country are using their environmental resources to live long and happy lives.This month’s cartogram shows the results of the most recent Happy Planet Index 2016 from the perspective of people. This gridded population cartogram, shows the world resized … [Read more...] about (Un)happy planet

According to the report, discrimination and under-representation of women in health, education, politics, work and other parts of life has repercussions for the development of their capabilities and their freedom of choice. Four of these aspects form the index which puts them in a globally measurable and comparable form: reproductive health is measured by the maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates; female empowerment is measured by proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females; education is expressed by the proportion of adult females and males aged 25 years and older with at least some secondary education; the economic status is included as labour market participation and measured by labour force participation rate of female and male populations aged 15 years and older. Using these aspects, the index shows human development costs of gender inequality. A higher GII value relates to more disparities between females and males within a country.While gender inequality … [Read more...] about Gender inequality

Remittances are one of the silent cogs that make the world’s economy turn and are arguably the most overlooked source of funding for developing nations. They flow around the world as remorselessly as ocean currents, moving invisibly, around the clock. Then this electronic money lands in bank accounts far from where it was earned, paid to families often separated by thousands of miles.Workers’ remittances is money transferred by migrants back to their countries of origin or citizenship. They contribute significantly to foreign currency inflows in tranquil and turbulent times. Perhaps the most readily identifiable form of remittances are with Philippine nurses or South Asian construction workers. In reality though, remittance workers and their impacts are everywhere and they say a good deal about the changing face of labour, people movement and human geography.In many cases remittances are the largest source of external finance for developing countries. ‘Anybody can … [Read more...] about The Money Trail

Humanity faces huge challenges in the remaining eight decades of the 21st century. The most important are: economic inequality, environmental degradation, and global security. Included within these is climate change, which is insidious as it could so easily make all the other problems worse. Our overarching challenge is to build win-win solutions that tackle these issues. These solutions are relatively easy to conceptualise and design but much harder to implement given all the vested interests created by our warped global economy, politics and society.I (Mark) would like to expand upon some of the points I made in a previous column for Geographical by investigating the state of our planet starting with the environment. Scientists are now suggesting that the impact of humans on the globe is so large in terms of the effect we collectively have, that humanity should now be seen as a geological superpower, on the same scale as plate tectonics or a massive meteorite impact. This is because … [Read more...] about Geographies of the Future

Geopolitics is not just about territory, resources and the international system. It is very much part of our everyday lives, and sometimes in the most intimate and unsettling ways. Thanks to the scholarship and praxis of feminist geographers, ‘we’ are far more attentive to how gender, sexuality and the body are geopolitical matters. A recent and tragic story involving a Turkish woman, public transport and murderous violence brought all of this to the fore again. The use of the word ‘again’ is deliberate given other incidents in places like India, where in 2012 a horrific mass rape and murder of another young woman in New Delhi made national and global headlines.In February, the burnt body of a young woman, Özgecan Aslan, was discovered after she disappeared in the southern Turkish city of Mersin. According to local newspaper reports, she had been travelling in a bus and was assaulted by the bus driver. As she resisted the sexually motivated assault, she was … [Read more...] about Hotspot – Turkey

It’s 9am on a Monday, Paseo de la Reforma in the centre of Mexico City is beginning to wake up. Banks with marble foyers are opening up their doors and coffee shops with Wi-Fi are facing their morning rush. The ten lanes of traffic are already heavy with cars, taxis and minibuses, and at the intersection with Avenue Insurgentes, two policewomen wearing flattering trousers and bold eyeshadow direct the flow with sharp blasts of their whistles.On the broad, tree-lined pavements, there’s a steady flow of chilangos – as the residents of Mexico City are known – scurrying to work. Among them is 23-year-old Jael Cedillo Rodriguez. Dressed in a pink, tailored jacket and four-inch heels, she hurries through the crowds clutching a clear plastic briefcase, listening to Shakira on her iPod. Diligent, switched on, ambitious and open-minded, Cedillo is part of a new generation of chilangos who are embracing a new way of life.Her days are typically busy. By the time she … [Read more...] about Mexico City: boom town